![]() ![]() She also journeys into the hardest regions of her own childhood, because sometimes in order to move forwards we first have to look back. She revisits the towns she grew up in to try to discover what being poor really means in Britain today and whether anything has changed. In the same week that Rees-Mogg’s book was published came Kerry Hudson’s astonishing Lowborn: Growing Up, Getting Away and Returning to Britain’s Poorest Towns (Chatto & Windus, £14.99), a stunning memoir and personal exploration of poverty in Britain today. Lowborn is Kerry's exploration of where she came from. ![]() But she often finds herself looking over her shoulder, caught somehow between two worlds. She has a secure home, a loving partner and access to art, music, film and books. She's a prizewinning novelist who has travelled the world. Twenty years later, Kerry's life is unrecognisable. She scores eight out of ten on the Adverse Childhood Experiences measure of childhood trauma. Always on the move with her single mother, Kerry attended nine primary schools and five secondaries, living in B&Bs and council flats. The poverty she grew up in was all-encompassing, grinding and often dehumanising. ![]() When every day of your life you have been told you have nothing of value to offer, that you are worth nothing to society, can you ever escape that sense of being `lowborn' no matter how far you've come? Kerry Hudson is proudly working class but she was never proudly poor. ![]()
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